Mainstream Media Now Labeling Each Other “Fake News”

The beginning of what has morphed into a free-for-all was predictable. Media outlets make money in proportion to the number of viewers. That’s obvious. Competition, especially successful competition, can spread those viewers around. After all, even for the most ardent news-junkie, there are just so many hours in the day that can be devoted to news programming and websites. So the big guys launched their attack on independent news gathering organizations operating on the web.

Remember the comment about credibility? If the mainstream media can destroy the credibility of alternative outlets, then they can protect their brands and maintain their levels of viewership. The problem for them is that this isn’t working out so well. Branding the alternative media as sources of fake news has backfired.

Thanks to CNN and BuzzFeed, a war now rages among corporate media outlets, a true study in irony, as the New York Times and Guardian hurl accusations the two outlets are guilty of publishing Fake News — the same Fake News all of the aforementioned have cited in unabashed attempts to discredit legitimate alternative media.

This is really a lot of fun to watch. The current altercations within the media industry have been fueled by a bogus report of bizarre and incriminating behavior on the part of Mr. Trump that CNN published which was then picked up by BuzzFeed. That turned out to be a really bad move on their parts as what was reported as news was simply untrue.

CNN first published an article citing without including information ostensively ruinous to President-elect Donald Trump’s political career — but BuzzFeed took that ball and ran — publishing documents believed to have originated from an unnamed British intelligence officer and admittedly unsubstantiated and unverified.

Careless reporting by the mainstream press, in other words, has reached critical mass — and known publishers of Fake News are now calling each other to task for egregiously vapid journalism.

That’s a nice term, isn’t it? “Egregiously vapid journalism.” More crudely referred to as spreading BS. Please recall that those in big media are supposed to be the professional journalists, a put-down to anyone not possessing the proper degree from the proper universities.

Where they’ve missed it is that in what they gained by the prestige of their educations and other qualifications, they’ve thrown out the window by publishing not only biased reports, but also by engaging in egregiously vapid journalism, thereby destroying their credibility. After all, it doesn’t take a journalism degree from Northwestern to lie.

CNN first reported on the dossier allegedly obtained from the unnamed British intelligence official, but left out the more lurid and revealing details from the 35-pages BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith later decided were fair game for publication — despite “serious reason to doubt the allegations.”

BuzzFeed reported Tuesday, “The dossier, which is a collection of memos written over a period of months, includes specific, unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives, and graphic claims of sexual acts documented by the Russians. BuzzFeed News reporters in the US and Europe have been investigating various alleged facts in the dossier but have not verified or falsified them. CNN reported Tuesday that a two-page synopsis of the report was given to President Obama and Trump.”

The sensation brought millions of viewers to BuzzFeed, which of course translates into dollars in advertising revenue. Note that while BuzzFeed ran the whole thing, CNN was in on it, too. Hence, they deliberately published “unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations,” and implied that it is news.

What has emerged is members of the mainstream media hurling accusations of spreading fake news at each other. For those who are fed up with whole bunch of them, it’s a thing of beauty.

Hell bent on pinning blame for its own journalistic failures throughout the election cycle, corporate media began targeting alternative outlets as Fake News and Russian propaganda for its stellar reporting on the contents of leaked documents deleterious to Hillary Clinton.

But because the mainstream press constitutes little more than a mouthpiece for the U.S. political establishment, independent journalists — aware of this nonsense — have continually called out the errant and viral reports from outlets like the Times, CNN, and Washington Post.

There it is. The utter lack of credibility of the mainstream press for all to see. In their zeal to promote Hillary Clinton and destroy Donald Trump, they’ve promoted fake news themselves.

Indisputably, however — and particularly as the American public watches this unseemly and mortifying abandonment of journalistic integrity play out — mainstream media is now little more than a picked-over carcass of its former self.

To believe anything a corporate press this errant and devoid of the standards, principles, and rectitude its roots were founded on — unless purely for entertainment’s sake — would plainly be foolhardy. Garnering reliable information from mainstream presstitutes is like agreeing to play Russian roulette with facts.

It might not yet be time to stick a fork in them, but their former positions at the top of the media food chain looks gone forever.

Source: The Free Thought Project

Photo: Activist Post